“The Self That God created needs nothing. It is forever complete, safe, loved and loving. It seeks to share rather than to get; to extend rather than project. It has no needs and wants to join with others out of their mutual awareness of abundance.” (Preface, A Course in Miracles, FIP ed., “What It Says,” 7th paragraph)
The Self is the inner essence, the part of our Being that recognizes oneness with God. It is the Christ Who is within. We do not have to feel that to think like this is arrogance; instead, it is supreme good sense. The Self is “complete, safe, loved and loving.” What more could we want?
We need to realize that sharing and extending are functions of the Son of God, our real Self. The little self who is dominated by the ego is really nothing, a travesty of reality. We ought to avoid “getting” and “projecting.” And when we share and extend, by definition we are deemphasizing the ego in our experience. The ego gives only to get; it seeks to aggrandize self at the expense, sometimes, of others. Even when we seek to aggrandize ourselves with no expense to others, we are still thinking amiss. And it is this wrongful thinking that is nailing us to our little crosses.
We do have abundance. Abundance is our inheritance. And as soon as we have taken steps to avoid egotistical leanings, just choosing to stop such thinking in its tracks, we will be taking the first step toward unveiling the inner Self. When we have taken this first step, God moves to supply the rest forthwith. He only waits on our invitation, and that invitation can come as soon as we recognize what we really need is Him.
I am not clear on what you define as the inner self. Is it the Spirit of Christ in the believer? Or is it our spirit born again? Or something else?
Following the ideas in A Course of Love and now Mirari, the self (with a little “s”) is meant to be the persona, the personality. The Self (with a capital “S”) partakes even more of our Creator, for God dwells both within and without. The inner Self is more the Spirit of Christ, usually, than the self that partakes only of our persona. Either self or Self can be “born again,” to use traditional terminology.
A Course of Love makes it a little more complicated than I have said, but what I said is the gist of the self/Self in that book.
Love, Celia
Thank you for your explanation.